The Circle

ten.
    “Let’s see the seahorses,” Mae said, and moved to the next aquarium. There, amid a
     pastel bouquet of coral and flowing fronds of blueseaweed, she saw hundreds, maybe thousands, of tiny beings, no bigger than the fingers
     of a child, hiding in nooks, clinging to the foliage. “Not particularly friendly fish,
     these guys. Wait, are they even fish?” she asked, and looked to her wrist, where a
     watcher had already sent the answer.
Absolutely a fish! Class Actinopterygii. Same as cod and tuna
.
    “Thank you, Susanna Win from Greensboro!” Mae said, and rezinged the information to
     her followers. “Now let’s see if we can find the daddy of all these baby seahorses.
     As you might know, the male seahorse is the one that carries the offspring. The hundreds
     of babies you see were birthed just after the daddy arrived here. Now where is he?”
     Mae walked around the aquarium, and soon found him, about the size of her hand, resting
     at the bottom of the tank, leaning against the glass. “I think he’s hiding,” Mae said,
     “but he doesn’t seem to know we’re on the other side of the glass here, and can see
     everything.”
    She checked her wrist and adjusted the angle of her lens a bit, to get the best look
     at the fragile fish. He was curled with his back to her, looking exhausted and shy.
     She put her face, and lens, up to the glass, so close to him she could see the tiny
     clouds in his intelligent eyes, the unlikely freckles on his delicate snout. He was
     an improbable creature, a terrible swimmer, built like a Chinese lantern and utterly
     without defense. Her wrist highlighted a zing with exceptionally high ratings.
The croissant of the animal kingdom
, it said, and Mae repeated it aloud. But despite his fragility, somehow he had already
     reproduced, had given life to a hundred more like himself, while the octopus and the
     shark had traced the contours of their tanks and eaten. Not thatthe seahorse seemed to care. He was apart from his progeny, as if having no clue where
     they came from, and no interest in what happened to them.
    Mae checked the time. 1:02. Additional Guidance spoke through her earpiece: “Shark
     feeding ready.”
    “Okay,” Mae said, glancing at her wrist. “I’m seeing a bunch of requests that we get
     back to the shark, and it’s after one, so I’m thinking we’ll do that.” She left the
     seahorse, who turned to her, briefly, as if not wanting to see her go.
    Mae made her way back to the first and largest aquarium, which held Stenton’s shark.
     Above the aquarium, she saw a young woman, with curly black hair and cuffed white
     jeans, standing atop a sleek red ladder.
    “Hello,” Mae said to her. “I’m Mae.”
    The woman seemed ready to say “I know that,” but then, as if remembering they were
     on camera, adopted a studied, performative tone. “Hello Mae, I’m Georgia, and I’ll
     be feeding Mr. Stenton’s shark now.”
    And then, though it was blind, and there was no food yet in the tank, the shark seemed
     to sense a feast was at hand. It began turning like a cyclone, rising ever-closer
     to the surface. Mae’s watchers had already risen by 42,000.
    “
Some
one’s hungry,” Mae said.
    The shark, which had seemed only passingly menacing before, now appeared vicious and
     wholly sentient, the embodiment of the predatory instinct. Georgia was attempting
     to look confident, competent, but Mae saw fear and trepidation in her eyes. “Ready
     downthere?” she asked, without taking her eyes off the shark making its way toward her.
    “We’re ready,” Mae said.
    “Okay, I’m going to feed the shark something new today. As you know, he’s been fed
     all kinds of stuff, from salmon to herring to jellyfish. He’s devoured everything
     with equal enthusiasm. Yesterday we tried a manta, which we didn’t expect him to enjoy,
     but he didn’t hesitate, and ate with gusto. So today we’re again experimenting with
     a new food. As you can see,” she said, and Mae noticed that the bucket she carried
     was made of lucite, and inside she saw something blue and brown, with too many legs.
     She heard it ticking against the bucket walls: a lobster. Mae had never thought of
     sharks eating lobsters, but she couldn’t see why they wouldn’t.
    “Here we have a regular Maine lobster, which we’re not sure if this shark is equipped
     to eat.”
    Georgia was perhaps trying to put on a good show, but even Mae was nervous about how
     long she